Lincoln's call to honor the nation's founding principles

Published 5:32 pm, Friday, November 15, 2013

On Tuesday we will observe the 150th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, manifestly the most famous speech in U.S. history.

At the ceremony dedicating a cemetery for thousands of Union soldiers who died during the Battle of Gettysburg in July, in 10 sentences and fewer than 275 words, Lincoln established his greatness as a teacher and prophet by succinctly explaining the meaning of the terrible war, then in its third year, as a test of the proposition in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal."

He also challenged the people of the North and West to complete the unfinished task of restoring the Union founded in 1776 by seeking a "new birth of freedom," which, 11-1/2 months after issuing the final Emancipation Proclamation, clearly anticipated the abolition of slavery.

We should reflect as a community on the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln's call for a return to the nation's founding principles, and the magnificent oration's transformative aftermath.

What is less well known is that, about three weeks after the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln issued one of his most important public papers, the proclamation of amnesty and reconstruction. By December 1863, the war had turned in favor of the Union, although victory was far from certain. Nevertheless, in this proclamation, Lincoln advanced the inspiring general statements and metaphors in the Gettysburg Address into a more specific vision for post-Civil War America. In Lincoln's view, the Union would be restored by allowing the senators and representatives of the 11 southern states that had seceded to return to Congress. To do this, Lincoln proposed to use the president's broad pardon power in Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution to offer amnesty to most Confederate office-holders, soldiers, and sailors, accompanied by return of all of their property, except slaves, if they would take an oath of loyalty to the United States.

The abolishment of slavery

After a number of people in each Confederate state equivalent to 10 percent of the voters in the election of 1860 took that oath, the state would become eligible for restoration of its full political rights and could hold elections for its seats in both houses of Congress. Only implied here, slavery would, of course, be abolished.

As the centerpiece of Reconstruction, the freeing of 4 million slaves, alone, would constitute the most significant revolution in nation's history since independence in 1776. Would the revolution proceed to include constitutional guarantees of equality and voting rights for African-Americans? No one knew, and Lincoln was not ready to address these potentially explosive issues November-December 1863.

One explanation for Lincoln's reticence might have been the complex political realities of the critically important middle year of the Civil War. Throughout the greatest crisis in U.S. history, Lincoln confronted political challenges from all sides, and election-year politics complicated Lincoln's task. While trying to prepare for what became the controversial postwar period known as Reconstruction, Lincoln could surmise that most white southerners would resist even the mildest efforts to change their society, economy and culture. By this time, many northern Democrats had accepted the inevitability that a Union victory would result in the abolition of slavery in all 15 states where it was permitted, but they were certain to oppose any further effort to impose fundamental change on those states. In contrast, former abolitionists now known as Radical Republicans, members of Lincoln's own party, were determined to punish the South for causing the conflict and to revolutionize their institutions. While Lincoln stood near the middle of the political spectrum, he still had a war to win, and he was not certain of victory in the presidential election that would be held in November 1864. Lincoln certainly believed that to ensure "these (Union) dead shall not have died in vain," as he urged the immediate audience and the nation in the Gettysburg Address, was to become the first president since Andrew Jackson in 1832 to be elected to a second term.

`...events have controlled me"

If the war was won, the Union was restored, and slavery was well on its way to final, permanent destruction, Lincoln was prepared to be as generous to the South as circumstances permitted. However, as Lincoln famously wrote to a correspondent in April 1864: "I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me."

Late in the winter of 1863-1864, Radical Republicans in Congress proposed a plan for a harsh, punitive Reconstruction, known as the Wade-Davis Bill, and they threatened to run a Radical against Lincoln for the Republican presidential nomination. Lincoln pocket-vetoed the bill and faced down the possible Radical challengers for his office. That did not, however, guarantee his re-election. As late as August 1864, Lincoln feared he would lose to Democrat George McClellan, who promised to negotiate with Confederate officials to end the war and restore the old Union, probably with the continuation of slavery, effectively a return to the status quo antebellum. Late in the summer of 1864, when a second term for Lincoln remained unlikely, significant Union victories at Atlanta and in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, and with overwhelming support from Union soldiers and sailors who often were able to obtain brief furloughs to return home or travel to other venues to vote, Lincoln prevailed. A few months later, shortly after Lincoln gave his second inaugural address, perhaps his greatest speech, the Union won the war, and the proposed Thirteenth Amendment, having been passed by both houses of Congress, was nearing ratification by the states.

Lincoln is occasionally criticized as a clever, pragmatic politician, often lacking in clear principles. However, the Gettysburg Address demonstrated that Lincoln's leadership in late 1863 could have been a beacon to show the long and deeply divided nation a stable path through the early years of Reconstruction. Instead, his assassination in April 1865 made Lincoln a secular martyr but denied the American people his political wisdom. Rarely has history provided a better example of the axiom that one person can make a difference.